


The Hard Way

by Omnicat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: CNTUAW stands for Fade-To-Black Gang Rape, Dark Side-Typical Training Methods, First Order Trash Party, Gen, Psychological Torture, Snoke Being a Dick, The Knights of Ren Were Ben's Fellow Students, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 13:24:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/Omnicat
Summary: He knows he has a lesson to learn today, but it’s not until he is finishing off his fourth opponent that Kylo Ren realizes he might not be meant topassthis test.





	The Hard Way

**Author's Note:**

> The summaries of the upcoming _The Rise of Kylo Ren_ comic have me vibrating out of my seat with excitement, but they did remind me, somewhat rudely, that this fic was still languishing in my fic folder. I've been holding it back for months thinking I'd publish it as a two-parter, but the second part has so far failed to materialized, and now what my Knights of Ren backstory is officially jossed, I've decided to throw in the towel. So here's the original one-shot, _as_ a one-shot. Enjoy!

He knows he has a lesson to learn today, but it’s not until he is finishing off his fourth opponent that Kylo Ren realizes he might not be meant to _pass_ this test.

His arm is locked around Uliya’s – _dammit, Vrata Ren’s_ – throat, his legs wrapped around her arms and chest, pinning her down atop him. The enraged bucking of her hips and scrabbling of her feet against the training room mats is starting to slow, and the range of his senses relaxes, expanding beyond the urgency of keeping her immobilized with his body and holding back the remaining Knights with the Force.

Those two are pounding against his shield with undiminished rage and fervor, but the three he’s already overpowered are no longer simmering in humiliation and resentment off to the side. There’s a medic crouched over Darsh (_no, Nunok Ren, come on_), administering an injection of something or other. Meanwhile, Yel Ren (_not Xezerrte, good, finally_) pushes herself up from her slouch against the wall and, heedless of the debilitating damage he had done her barely ten minutes before, shakes out her limbs and cracks her knuckles.

She catches his eye. Her fangs bare in a grin.

"Round two," she says, as much in his mind as out loud.

_Extremely promising results to our experimental instant treatment,_ Kylo can hear the medic thinking, dictating notes to herself even as the proceedings in the center of the room put her on edge.

_Always be prepared for anything, Kylo Ren,_ Snoke tells him from the observation platform, from deep inside his marrow. _Today your training will take a great leap forward... if you are worthy of it._

Snoke’s presence is everywhere, coiling amidst and inside Kylo and the other Knights of Ren like smoke in a room on fire. And Kylo can’t be sure, can’t see his master from his current position, but he thinks he can feel Snoke smiling.

The medic moves on to her last patient. Nunok, too, gets up off the floor. Then Yel comes barreling towards him, and Kylo’s grip on the Force falters under a sudden doubling of the onslaught on his shields, and they are on him.

Goshol Ren and Birra Ren shove Uliya out of the way like a sack of blue potatoes. They both grab his already torn training shirt. Goshol takes him by the throat with his other hand while Birra tries to pull him toward her, and it’s not until Yel screams "Hold him down!" that they stop trying to claim him for themselves and work together. Kylo manages to headbutt Goshol in the face, but he started out on his back on the floor and between Birra, Goshol and Nunok, that’s where they keep him.

Yel Ren looks down upon Kylo Ren, eyes bright with hatred, and, with all her strength, kicks him in the balls.

He howls and futilely tries to curl in on himself. Grinning, she kicks him again for good measure and then walks in a leisurely circle around Birra until she reaches Kylo’s head.

"Hiya, ‘boss’," she sneers, and stomps on his face.

Pain explodes through his head with a sickening _crack_.

_They can’t kill me,_ he thinks through the white-hot haze of pain. _I can’t let them._

They hate him, he knows they do. They defended him (_saved_ him) when his uncle and master turned on him and the rest of the temple followed suit. They listened, and more importantly, they _believed_ him. They followed when Snoke offered his sanctuary.

And they hate him more with every day that passes.

Kylo Ren is stronger by far than any of them. He was even as Ben Solo, and now he takes to Snoke’s teachings faster than all the others, the smoke-and-honey voice of his master’s wisdom smoothing over all the things he once thought ugly and wrong in himself, filling them with the Dark Side until he can barely remember why he used to hate himself for them. Snoke is master to them all, but none hold his favor like Kylo Ren, can bargain on their behalf or navigate Snoke’s high and sometimes terrifying demands like him. He is the youngest of them, was a callow youth shaking apart under Rebellion veteran Totasher’s, Cluru Ren’s, arm when they left the temple, but through his superior power and aptitude he now leads their fire-forged band of refugees. And they hate and resent and fear him for it.

Yel thinks Kylo lied to them when he led them to the First Order. She hasn’t said it, but she doesn’t need to, and she’s been looking for an excuse to take him to task for it for months.

_I can’t let them kill me,_ he thinks, the same way he sometimes thinks: _I can’t let him kill them._

So he feels his pain, wraps his scattered mind around it, and delves deep; deep enough for the physical reality of it to fall away, for the weakness it creates in his body to fade, for the ice-and-fire power it represents in the Dark Side of the Force to be the only thing left of it. Renewed strength fills him like the air he draws into his lungs, like the blood that flows through his veins.

With a roar, he wrenches his left arm from Goshol’s grip and throws him back with the Force. Birra follows, only to be replaced by Tota– _Cluru_, who was hanging back after his injection kicked in. Yel’s boot collides with his face again. His head snaps to the side with a wet grunt and a painful, tearing wrench of the muscles in his neck. There’s blood in his mouth, running down his throat from his broken nose. Kylo keeps the chain of pain-to-power going, rolling with the kick and throwing himself onto Cluru, grappling for any hint of an advantage. At the same time, he lashes out at Nunok, putting the Force into every kick of his feet.

It works, somehow. He’s on his feet, his knee driving up into Cluru’s jaw, his eye socket, his throat. His foot collides squarely with Yel’s stomach, his knuckles split on the bony ridges protruding from her jaw but this punch knocks her off-balance, and he can do this, he did it before, he was winning, so what if they’re getting back up while he’s tiring, he’s stronger than any of them, he –

– he notices Uliya’s presence behind him a fraction of a second before she kicks his feet out from under him. And then there are boots. Boots everywhere. Kicking his ribs, his face, his shins, the soft vulnerable underside of his belly, the back of his head, his spine and pelvis and collarbone. The pain is too much, too erratic and pervasive, to get a grip on it. He can only push himself up only to get kicked back down, over and over and over, until he can’t anymore. Ben thinks he’s broken at least two bones, but the pain is everywhere and all he can do anymore is curl up to protect his head and organs.

_This is a lesson, Kylo Ren,_ Snoke’s voice whispers in his mind. _You would do well to learn it this time._

Then the Supreme Leader calls out _"Enough!"_, and slowly the blows cease.

The buzz of the forcefield increases in pitch before cutting off as it shuts down, and the mechanism of the retractable stairs whirrs smoothly. There’s something wrong with one of Ben’s eardrums, his wet, erratic breaths and racing heartbeat throbbing loud enough to drown out everything else, and yet he can hear perfectly the rustle of Snoke’s robes and the whisper of his slippers as he descends from the observation platform and approaches. When the others take a reverent (_fearful_) step back and get down on one knee, however, he only senses it in the Force.

"Look at me," Snoke demands.

Everything hurts. But in the Dark Side of the Force, pain is power. It’s over, and he’s not dead yet, because there’s a lesson he’s meant to take away from this, a weakness he must overcome the hard way. Ben dutifully lowers his trembling arms, turns his head, and looks up at his master through swollen eyes.

"The bout is over. You have lost, Kylo Ren. And to the victors go the spoils," Snoke says, looking beyond Ben with a cool, sinister smile. "Congratulations, my Knights of Ren. Rise and take pleasure in your triumph. What will you do with your rightful bounty?"

Silence.

Ben feels like he can’t breathe.

Snoke chuckles soundlessly. _Yes, Kylo Ren. _This_ will be your lesson._

With a flick of Snoke’s wrist, Ben’s body rolls over to face his comrades – his Knights, his fellow padawans, his executioners.

"All yours. What shall it be?"

Nunok, Darsh, who Ben Solo had played dejarik with until his ignoble demise, steps forward and licks his lips. His pants are tented, as they often are when adrenaline is thick in his blood, and his one remaining lekku twitches incessantly; a nervous habit he had developed around the same time Kylo Ren was born.

"I have an idea," he says.

Ben feels all the warmth leech from the room.

They get a hoverchair down from the platform for the Supreme Leader, pull a retractable table laid out with knives from the wall, store all but one of the knives, and hoist Ben’s barely responsive body onto the edge of the table. A strangled cry bursts from his raw throat, every muscle and every bone in his body screaming in protest.

"We should have let them finish what Master Skywalker started," Birra Ren hisses in his ear. Birra, Na Me, after Ben the youngest student at the temple, a canny and whip-smart but illiterate stray Uncle Luke had brought home and Ben had taught to read and write. So grateful for the new life she’d been given – and so betrayed by what the life she had followed Kylo Ren into has turned out to be. "You should’ve just died when he told you to!"

Something cold touches his back, followed by the sting of a knife cutting through his tattered, sweaty shirt with no regard for the skin beneath. He jerks and tries to push himself up off of the table. But the others hold him down, and when he reaches for the Force, the feeling of an iron fist closes around his very soul.

"Turn him around," Snoke says. "I want to see his face."

There are hands on him, pushing him around, yanking away the remains of his shirt, cutting through his belt and pulling down his pants, spreading his legs and the cheeks of his ass and fisting in his hair so he has no choice but to face his master. Ruutsal – no, Goshol Ren, not Ruutsal who had cooked for a living and gleefully won himself permanent kitchen duty by unanimous vote, not now, not anymore – Goshol starts laughing when Nunok undoes his belt. A cruel and hysterical and fractured laugh that sounds like nothing Ben has ever heard before.

Snoke watches him the entire time, and no matter how hard he tries, Ben can’t look away. Snoke is everywhere: filling his vision, drifting through the air, filling up the ever-widening cracks in his sanity, goading on Nunok’s hands on his hips.

_You can lie to me all you like, young Solo, but you do not fool me. Clearly Skywalker didn’t get through to you,_ he says. _I have tolerated your foolishness long enough. This lesson will not end until you learn, once and for all, who you are and who you can count on._

He is Kylo Ren. He is Snoke’s, and can rely only on his master.

And as promised, the Knights don’t take their hands off of him until the lesson has well and truly sunk in.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments on older fics will ALWAYS remain welcome. :)


End file.
